Prof. Paola Ayala leads the group Tailored Hybrid Structures, which is part of the larger unit Electronic Properties of Materials at the Faculty of Physics. Before being appointed as Associate Professor of the Faculty of Physics, she held the Berta Karlik Named-Professorship after coming as Marie Curie Fellow of the European Union.  Ayala worked previously at the IFW-Dresden (Germany), PUC-Rio (Brasil) and Aalto University K(Finland). Among the awards she has received are the EU-Marie-Curie-Fellowship, the Matilde-Hidalgo Science Prize 2017, the Future Leader recognition of the S&T Society Forum 2012 (Kyoto-Japan), the Prometeo Grant and a joint DAAD(Germany)/ CNPq (Brazil) grant. She was appointed as inaugural dean for Physics and Nanotechnology of the ambitious scientific Latin-American Yachay-Tech University 2015-17.

Ayala is the Physics representative for the Equal Opportunities Working Party of the University of Vienna and serves as the team leader of the Austrian team of the Working group of Women in Physics of the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). 

Among her commitments for the scientific community have been being part of the  Georg Foster Program selection commitee (Humboldt Foundation-Germany), her work as Board Review member of the Panel Catalytic Materials/Surface Science (Elettra Synchrotron/ Italy) and current journal editorial activities for “Carbon Trends” (Elsevier, The Netherlands) and the "Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology" (Beilstein-Institut, Germany).